Frozen Music (25 page)

It was Lotten. She wanted Linus to stop off at Domus and buy Ivar a pair of wellington boots. Linus felt his heartbeat slow down and steady as he listened and agreed.

Ivar was drawing a picture of an opera house. He added a sun to his picture. The phone rang again.

‘You did it!' It was Sten, his colleague from the firm. ‘We've just had a fax through with the result of the competition. You won. The commission for the Stuart Lloyd opera house is yours. They want to talk to you as soon as possible. I know you're on your way to the island, but…'

‘Sure. Sure, I'll call them right now. Give me the number again, would you?' He jotted down the numbers on the back of a brown envelope he'd picked up from the floor. ‘Will that get me through to Stuart Lloyd direct?'

‘I said, can I have another drink?' Ivar sounded impatient.

‘Drink?' Linus had replaced the receiver. ‘Drink, yes of course. What would you like? Champagne? Lingonberry?'

‘O'Boy chocolate milk, please.'

‘O'Boy. Right you are.' His heart was thumping hard against his chest and the excitement he had felt when first hearing the news kept growing, slowly filling his body from the pit of his stomach up towards his chest, until it almost squeezed the breath from him. Trying to concentrate on Ivar, he brought the tin of O'Boy out from the cupboard. Next he needed milk. He opened the fridge and stared into it, in the idiotic hope that a carton of milk would miraculously materialise. It did not. ‘Sorry, little man, we seem to be out of milk.'

‘Mummy said you would be,' Ivar stated. ‘She said, “Eat all your breakfast because your father is bound to have nothing but beer in his fridge.” I can't drink beer,' he added.

Linus closed the fridge. ‘I tell you what,' he said. ‘Why don't we just get on our way. We can stop off at the kiosk at Ytterby and buy you an ice-cream. One call, I'll just make one call and then we'll be off, promise. You see, I won. My design won the competition.'

‘Will Grandpa be there when we arrive?' Ivar asked from the back of the car. Linus nodded in the rear-view mirror. ‘And Grandma Olivia?'

‘Yes, she'll be there too.' He went over in his mind the conversation he had just had with his client, Stuart Lloyd, who had confirmed the
fax and congratulated him on the design. As soon as the Easter break was over he wanted Linus to fly over to London for a meeting. ‘We intend you to have a free hand, though, believe me. We'll expect consultation, but you'll have the final word at each stage.' If Stuart Lloyd had been a fairy godmother waving a magic wand, instead of a middle-aged man with a beard, he could not have brought things to a happier conclusion, Linus thought. God, it was frightening getting everything you'd ever wanted.

‘I like Grandma Olivia. I don't think she's a smug old bat at all,' Ivar said.

‘Of course she isn't a smug old bat. Whoever put that idea…' Here Linus broke off, knowing suddenly all too well whose words Ivar was repeating.

‘Mummy says men are weak.' Ivar's voice fluted towards him. ‘But I saw this muscle-man on TV and he could lift a whole car. It wasn't a very big car, but I still think he had to be quite strong.'

‘Absolutely, Ivar.' There was silence.

Then Ivar spoke again: ‘Mummy says that women are strong like silk thread but…'

‘Look at all those balloons,' Linus said, pointing to the balloon seller by the gates to the Municipal Gardens. ‘Have you ever seen so many balloons?'

‘Yes, I have.'

‘Oh. Where?'

‘At Torvald's party. There were bunny balloons and doggy balloons and kitty balloons… I wouldn't have called them that myself, I would have said rabbit balloons and dog balloons and cat balloons but the balloon man…'

I have been given a chance few men are given
, Linus thought.
The chance to fulfil my dream. Bloody hell!

‘Of course balloons are fat, but they're not at all strong,' Ivar told him. ‘They go bang.' He tried the word again, raising his voice to a high-pitched squeak. ‘Bang! As soon as you touch them, almost.'

‘They sure do,' Linus said, changing into the fast lane as they joined the motorway.

Ivar sucked on a sweet he had found in his jeans pocket. ‘I sometimes wonder why sweets take so little time to eat when Brussels sprouts take ages. Ages and ages and ages and ages.'

‘Because you like sweets and you don't like Brussels sprouts.'

‘But I do like Brussels sprouts.'

‘Oh.' Linus slowed down and changed lanes again, keeping right and filtering off on to the smaller road leading to the island.

‘Could Grandpa lift a car?'

‘No.'

‘Has he tried?'

‘Not to my knowledge.'

‘So how does he know he can't?'

‘Some things you just know, Ivar. You know a fire burns without putting your hand in it. When you wake up in winter and see snow you know it's cold before you've even gone outside.'

‘But that's because I went outside in the snow last year. And Torvald's little sister put her finger in a candle flame and she screamed for ages so it must have hurt.'

‘Ivar.'

‘Hm.'

‘Would you understand if I told you that I'm so pleased right now that I don't want to talk for a little while?'

‘Daddy.' Ivar's voice was careful, as if tiptoeing towards him. ‘Daddy?'

‘Yes, Ivar.'

‘Who else will be there?'

‘On the island? Oh, everyone.'

‘Are they nice, everyone?'

‘Don't you remember? Don't you remember meeting Uncle Gerald and Cousin Kerstin and Aunt Ulla?'

Ivar thought for a moment. Then he shook his head vigorously. ‘Not very much.'

‘Well, you'll see them all in a little while. Then you'll remember.'

‘It strikes me', Audrey said, ‘that you have to be young in order fully to appreciate the concept of ageing gracefully. I have to admit that the charm of the idea is completely lost on me these days.' My mother was reclining against a stack of lacy pillows, holding a silver-backed looking-glass up to her face, pouting into it, frowning, smiling, raising her chin and lowering it again. With a sigh, she put it down on the chest of drawers next to her bed and reached for a sugar-dusted apple doughnut. Across the soft blue counterpane shiny golden toffee wrappers lay scattered like melted stars and on the floor stood a silver ice bucket, a bottle of champagne periscoping over the rim. Audrey glanced at her watch. ‘Time for a drink. You'll have one, won't you darling?' My mother was the only one left in my acquaintance who still expected me to make decisions. I rewarded her with a nod followed by a shake of the head. ‘Better not, I'm driving.'

‘But you sold the car when you moved. You told me you couldn't afford to keep it.'

Found out. ‘All right, then, it clashes with my medication.'

‘Oh, Esther, you're on something at last! I
am
pleased. I know you've always despised that kind of thing, but I was sure it would help to stop you being so
serious
.' She smiled contentedly and bit into the doughnut, her free hand beneath her chin to stop the sugar from falling on to the sheets. ‘Mother knows best.' She leant over the side of the bed and pulled the dripping bottle out of the bucket. ‘You know, life is so much easier since they invented champagne stoppers that really work. It keeps fresh for days with one of these little gadgets.' She waved what looked like a silver spinning top at me and poured
herself a glass. ‘I really don't like all this trouble at Covent Garden,' she said suddenly. ‘Things are not well with the arts, I tell you.'

‘What do you care? You never go out.'

‘I know I don't, but I'd like other people to have the benefit of these things. Anyway, I watch the televised performances. I have my books.' She gesticulated towards the newly installed bookcase, its shelves filled already but for a small space, about four hardbacks wide, on the bottom left. ‘But music is the key, I'm sure of it. Even the coarsest thug would respond to Mozart, the hardest heart could not fail to soften at the sound of Beethoven's “Spring” Sonata. Oh, Esther, why did you give up the flute?'

I sat back in the blue-and-white checked armchair at the foot of my mother's bed and closed my eyes. I saw myself being attacked by a burly mugger holding a knife to my throat as I pull out my flute and begin to play. The shock might kill him, of course, but I wouldn't like to bank on it. But I was too tired to argue the point.

‘So how are you anyway?' Audrey asked.

I thought about it for a moment. ‘Well,' I said. ‘Considering that I'm out of work and have been forced to attend a psychiatric clinic while Angus has decided that the best way of standing by his woman is buggering off to Chicago for six months, things are going remarkably well.'

My mother looked pleased to hear it. ‘And have you heard from your father lately?' she asked.

I nodded. ‘He wants me to come up for a visit. He says he's strong enough to overcome the siren song of family ties by now. Insanity obviously runs in the family.'

‘Not on
my
side, Esther. Now if you don't mind I'll just finish my letter from Olivia.' Audrey picked up the handwritten pages that lay folded on her lap and resumed her reading. ‘Apparently they're all on the island. Bertil is taking to retirement just as badly as she thought he would, refusing to do all the things he'd always planned to do once he had the time.' She glanced up at me. ‘That's so typical. It's easier for women, on the whole. Life never allows us to be as single-minded as men, so we have more resources to fall back on.' She read on. ‘Oh and
Linus's divorce has come through, which is very sad, but a great relief all the same. Still, Lotten spends a lot of the time ringing up to speak to Ivar and ending up screeching down the phone at Olivia blaming her and Bertil for it all.' My mother's voice and the sun shining straight in through the tall windows made me drowsy and I felt my eyes close. I opened them again as Audrey shrieked, ‘Darling, how exciting. Linus has got a huge commission. Very prestigious, very hush-hush.'

I tried to look alert and interested. I wanted to be interested, damn it. ‘What kind of commission?'

Audrey turned to the next page in the letter. ‘Olivia doesn't say.'

‘Ah.'

Audrey read on. ‘That Ulla person is there, as usual. Why Olivia puts up with it all I'll never know.' She continued, ‘Bertil's cousin Kerstin is training for the Wasa Run, jogging round the island every morning before breakfast and…'

‘What's the Wasa Run?' I interrupted, eager to prove to myself that I hadn't lost all interest in life. But it didn't really work because while Audrey explained – it had something to do with skis – my mind drifted along its now familiar routes: you get up in the morning, all ready to get on, work, do well, be good, do the right thing. Then a man's sneeze, as he drives along the M40, reverberates through the atmosphere and, before you know it, the walls of your existence come tumbling down. So what is the point? you ask yourself.

‘Gerald is showing no signs of improvement.' Audrey went on mumbling aloud as she read her letter. I gave her a brief kiss on her cheek, which was plump and wrinkled like a prune that had been left overnight to soak, and left.

‘I don't know if my mother stating so categorically that there's no insanity on
her
side of the family actually means that there is some on my father's side,' I said to the therapist.

‘I told you, you are not insane.'

‘So what am I doing here? Not an original question, I know, but pertinent nevertheless.'

‘What do
you
think you're doing here?'

There we go again. I sighed. ‘Have you
no
answers? Not even an itsy-bitsy tiny one. I mean, I came here for answers.'

Anthony Peel told me that in that case I had come to the wrong place. ‘You'll only find true answers within yourself.'

I tried to be patient. ‘That's the whole point, though; I don't want
my
answers, they don't work. I want someone else's. And while we're about it I wouldn't mind some absolutes back. You know the kind: “Just because Mummy threw a Pyrex bowl at Daddy and Daddy called Mummy a demented cow, it doesn't mean we're not the best of friends and love each other very much.” Or: “Virtue is its own reward.” Or even: “God loves you.”'

‘I think I can detect a little bit of irony there.' He sounded playful, all of a sudden, as he leant forward in his chair and looked deep into my eyes.

What was it with this looking-in-the-eye business? I used to do it when I was a child, to intimidate my friends, but I had given up because once we all started to wear make-up, I ended up too involved in checking how they'd made up their eyes. ‘I mean it, though,' I said. ‘I really need to find some of my old absolutes. So how do I go about it?'

‘But what I'd like you to see is that it's precisely this obsessive need for what you term absolutes which led to your breakdown in the first place. Of course it's frightening to go out and face the world unshielded, undressed if you like.'

‘Not frightening,' I said. ‘Just confusing. I'm confused, that's all. Wouldn't you be if you suddenly realised that you'd spent the best part of your life reading the instructions upside down?'

He said he would be. I was glad we agreed on something. He told me that I had to go out there and start making decisions again.

‘I thought I might find someone extremely bossy to make all the decisions for me, have a little rest.'

‘So you think that's the solution? Returning to some childlike state of dependency?'

‘I don't know about that,' I said. ‘I was actually a very independent
child. Someone had to make the decisions about the place and, like most children, I worked out early on that my parents certainly weren't up to it.'